The knockos had popped him coming off the George Washington Bridge, finding a baggie of chronic right up on the dashboard. Word had it that Supreme had simply stepped out of the car and, without prompting, casually told them about the half ki in the hubcap, the fifty bundles of heroin in the fake Benzi box. Running into him at the intake unit before coming to the rally tonight, Lorenzo had asked him why he had rolled over on himself like that. Supreme’s response, offered to a detective who liked to describe himself as “an old narco man,” made him sadder than hell:

“I’m just so tired of it, you know what I’m saying? Just mother-fuckin’ tired.”

These days people were fond of saying, “Crack’s whack, heroin’s back.” Yeah, well, Lorenzo was thinking, the stats might be down, the body count, but there was a tangible sadness out there, a resignation and surrender that was like death itself.

“We are sometimes”—the cleric, speaking softly now, smiled forgivingly at the sullen folks below him—“sometimes a frightened people. And with good reason, good reason. A young black male growing up in this, this cesspool of a city has a greater chance of meeting a violent death before he reaches his majority than did the average GI overseas in World War II. And that is according to the New York Times, the New York Times. But I am here to tell you something, and that is that there is nothing and no one to fear in this world but God himself. For we shall all die, and then comes Judgment, then comes Judgment.” He bowed to his audience. “Asalaam alaikim.”

As he moved off the stage, a thin murmur of “Asalaam alaikim”s came back at him, most people here a little too old to have tossed off Jesus in favor of Muhammad.

On the sidelines, Lorenzo rubbed his face as the audience politely turned to him, dutifully awaiting their next pounding. He looked out the window, eyeing the Convoy brothers one more time for a hit of anger, took in that eerie geometric garden of refrigerators, then hauled himself to his feet.

“We call ourselves a community We call ourselves a family,” Lorenzo declared in a cracked bellow, his usual tone of voice when addressing a large audience. “But we don’t want to be known as a snitch, so we are paying our allegiance to the wrong people.”

He lumbered back and forth across the stage like a big cat in a cage, gazing heavy-lidded at the squirming tenants, the impassive housing cops. He was a big man—six foot three, 240 pounds—with a royal gut, a pendulous and chronically split lower lip, and thick glasses. In situations like this, loud and angry usually did the trick.

“I have heard, I have heard someone say that if this was a white area, the police would have caught the guy already. If this was a white… No! No! That would only be true if the white people, the blue people, the polka-dot people would have stepped up and said, Yes! I saw who did it. Yes! I had heard those shots. Yes! Yes! Yes!… It’s time to get real with yourselves!”

Lorenzo glared at them, his anger fueled by the fact that he knew he was castigating the wrong people, the ones who at least showed up.

“But in this project it’s, No, no, no, don’t mention my name, no, no, don’t, don’t, no, no, what goes around comes around. So!” He reared up. “It has been a whole year. These people were shot a total of eight times. Eight explosions at nine o’clock in the morning.” He prowled the stage, spotting Miss Bankhead in the crowd, the elderly lady who had lived next door to the Barretts.

“But nobody heard nothing, nobody heard nothing. Now how can that be, if I know that if I turn on my radio too loud on the fourth floor someone on the first floor’s gonna be complaining about the racket. How can that be, if I know that if I drop a, a juice glass on the second floor someone from the third floor is gonna be running to the housing office complaining about the party in my apartment.” Lorenzo paced, furious, pushing up his glasses. “We have lost two of our loved ones.”

He pointed to Mother Barrett’s photo. “Look at her. Look! Mother Barrett. We gave her that name. She was our mother. Uncle Theo.” Lorenzo hesitated, knowing “Uncle” hadn’t the same visceral tug as “Mother.” “We called him that. How many of you here have gotten phone calls from him saying, Your kid’s at my house listenin’ to records.